hydrarchist writes"This story was posted by a participant at www.zeropaid.com, the hub for file sharing news.

Overpeer Poisoning P2P on Behalf of Labels, RIAA

A stealth-mode company called OVERPEER has been flooding the p2p networks with fake Eminem files in an attempt to stop the trading of "unauthorized" mp3s. If you've encountered the "loop" files, in which a section of the chorus or hook is repeated over and over, you've been tricked by
OVERPEER.

OVERPEER are doing this with the full knowlege and consent of Interscope and Universal Music, in fact they are under contract to Universal and other
major record labels, and will be doing a LOT MORE of this type of "interdiction" in the near future.

hydrarchist writes:"

The Regulation of Liberty: free speech, free trade and free gifts on the
Net

Richard Barbrook

[Click here for the bibliography]

'What makes the constitution of a state really strong and durable is such a
close observance of [social] conventions that natural relations and laws come
to be in harmony on all points, so that the law... seems only to ensure, accompany
and correct what is natural.' - Jean-Jacques Rousseau. (1)

The State in Cyberspace

The rapid expansion of e-commerce depends upon effective legal regulation of
the Net. As in the rest of the economy, courts and police are needed to enforce
the 'rules of the game' within on-line marketplaces. Theft remains theft even
when committed with the latest technology. Since the Net encourages its own
forms of anti-social behaviour, governments also have to update their legislation
to counter the new threats from so-called 'cyber-terrorism'. (2)
Trespass laws must now protect computer systems as well as physical buildings.
Not surprisingly, media corporations expect that the courts and the police will
carry on protecting their intellectual property. Anyone who distributes unauthorised
copies of copyright material over the Net must be punished. Anyone who invents
software potentially useful for on-line piracy should be criminalised. Like
other companies, media corporations need a secure legal framework for conducting
e-commerce with their customers. As in the old Wild West, business will only
prosper once law and order is established on the new electronic frontier. (3)

This new common sense has displaced the fashionable anti-statism of a few
years ago. According to the Californian ideology, national governments are incapable
of controlling the global system of computer-mediated communications. Instead,
individuals and businesses will compete to provide goods and services within
unregulated on-line marketplaces. The advance to the hi-tech future is simultaneously
the return to the liberal past. (4) Above all, this nostalgic
'New Paradigm' supposedly not only delivers greater economic efficiency, but
also extends individual freedom. For instance, state regulation of broadcasting
will become obsolete once everyone can buy and sell programming over the Net.
Just like after the American revolution, public institutions will only be needed
to provide minimal 'rules of the game' for people to trade information with
each other. (5) In their constitution, the Founding Fathers
formally prohibited government censorship of the press: the First Amendment.
This 'negative' concept of media freedom emphasised the absence of legal sanctions
against publishing dissident opinions. Like their fellow entrepreneurs, writers
and publishers should be able to produce what their customers want to buy. Free
speech is free trade. (6)

hydrarchist writes: The following is an interview by Matt Fuller and Snafu with Franco Berardi, Bifo, that took place by email during May and June 2001 focussing around the themes of his new book describing the development of the 'Cognitariat'. The 'Factory of Unhappiness', (La fabbrica dell¹infelicità. New economy e movimento del cognitariato) was recently published by Derive Approdi.

MF: In your new book, 'The Factory of Unhappiness' you describe a class formation, the 'cognitariat' - a conflation of cognitive worker and proletarian, working in 'so-called jobs'. You've also previously used the idea of the 'Virtual Class'. What are the qualities of the conitariat and how might they be distinguished from this slightly higher strata depicted by Kroker and Weinstein in 'Data Trash'?

Bifo: I like to refer to the concept of virtual class, which is a class that does not actually exist. It is only the abstraction of the fractal ocean of productive micro-actions of the cognitive workers. It is a useful concept, but it does not comprehend the existence (social and bodily) of those people who perform virtual tasks. But the social existence of virtual workers is not virtual, the sensual body of the virtual worker is not virtual. So I prefer to speak about cognitive proletariat (cognitariat) in order to emphasize the material (I mean physical, psychological, neurological) disease of the workers involved in the net-economy.